Gertrude

 Gertrude

I thought maybe today I would share something about someone I actually knew.  I was 10 years old, almost 11 when my Grandmother, Gertrude (Jackman) Montague passed away...but I had developed a strong impression of and love for her in that mount of time...she had made a deep imprint on my soul.

In looking for something else (hw often is this the case) I ran across two separate remembrances of her by two individuals, each of which capture a different aspect of her multi-faceted life.  I will share parts of eac of them here.

The first is from a friend.  She writes:

Gertrude was a pleasant hard-working woman.  She always had a smile and a good sense of humor  and was very east to associate with...

She was always helping someone besides keeping their home and family together.  She also had a nice family and she worked hard for them and loved them very dearly.

My husband lived close by them and after I moved to Payson I met Lucille Kinder Johnson and she took me to visit Gertrude and her family.  That was when I first met her.  I really liked her.

Then WPA was introduced in Payson.  She became a nurse and helped many people.  She was paid by the WPA which was a work project.  

After Bus & I were married and it was our second son when  Curtis was born.  Gertrude came to our house morning and night to take care of me & the baby.  That was in 1937 and we really appreciated her and what she did for us.  And then in 1940 when our second daughter was born, we had Gertrude come again to care for me and the baby...She was a very good nurse.

We always felt better after visiting with her.  I remember her walking everywhere she went.  She was indeed a good mother, a good housewife and home maker and a good friend.  I am glad that we knew her.

And this from a nephew, William Dean:

She was kind and cheerful.  She had a happy personality.  She loved her family and worked hard to make a good home for them.

In hard times she would fill all of her bottles with fruit, then fill several honey cans with peaches, and as the bottles were empty in the winter she would put the peaches form the cans in the bottles.  She raised a garden...chickens, pigs, and kept a cow for milk.

She cared for women who were confined with baby’s, and worked for sick people.  She was a good worker and always brought a happy spirit into any home that she entered.

She loved her parents and was always ready too help them when they needed her.  She had many friends and the neighbor children loved her and she had a yard full of them a lot of the time.

I have many memories of her, but I will share just two.  She had what seemed to me a huge upholstered rocker, and it was a competition to climb on her lap, it seemed that there were always two or three of us there at any given time, and she would just laugh the most wonderful laugh...and she would read to us, or tell us amazing stories...and I always felt such love and security on her lap in that big rocker (as I type this, I can hardly see the page through my tears).

By the time I was old enough to remember, Grandma had married a fine older man, Leo Condor, and lived in a rural area outside Richfield, Utah.  My family loves to tell the story of when I, probably all of five years old, came running breathlessly into her kitchen, grabbing her by the hand, and taking her hurriedly outside to see the chickens that had invaded her yard.  I think that was probably the first time I had seen free-range chickens, outside a coop.  She very patiently accompanied me, and shared my sense of amazement at these feathered creatures that she had seen every day for many years.

I still love my Grandma...I hope now you do too.  

 TWO ENTRIES INTO THE VALLEY

As we approach Thanksgiving, I thought it appropriate to note two of our ancestors’ entries into the Salt Lake Valley...separated by over eight years...after long treks across the vast and often treacherous plains.

The first, more historic and still remembered, was celebrated with little fanfare; the second, no longer remembered by any but angels and descendants, was celebrated with great fanfare.

From Levi Jackman, my great great great grandfather, who entered the valley with Parley P. Pratt’s party July 22nd, 1847, two days ahead of Brigham young’s party:

“July 22- This morning a part of the camp that we had left came up with us and others had to stop because of sickness.  Our movement was slow for it took all the able-bodied men from one-half to three-fourths of the time to make the road so that we could possibly get along.  It took us till 4 p.m. to fix the road and go about four miles.  We had to pass through a canyon that was full of timber, mostly small maple and the bluffs came almost together at the bottom.  And when we finally got through, it seemed like bursting from the confines of prison walls into the beauties of a world of pleasure and freedom.

We now had entered the valley and our vision could extend far and wide.  We were filled with joy and rejoicing and thanksgiving.  We could see to the west, about 30 miles distance, the Sale Lake, stretching itself northwest to a distance unknown to us.  And the valley extending far to the north and south.  No timber was to be seen only in the mountains...

July 23- We went a short distance north to a small grove on a little stream and camped.  Brother P. Pratt called the camp together and dedicated this country to the Lord.  We then commenced plowing to put in a little early corn, buckwheat, potatoes, peas, beans, etc.

The soil was good and before night we had put in seed.  We felt to thank the Lord that we had been preserved on our journey; that no lives were lost, that we had found a good country of land where we thought our enemies could never find us and where we could worship God unmolested.  According to our measure, we are 1040 miles from Winter Quarters.

Saturday, July 24- 

About noon, Brigham Young and company arrived and we had a time of rejoicing without restraint.”

Humble beginnings...

From my great great grandmother Sophia Bush Stradling, whose wagon train arrived Tuesday, September 25th, 1855:

“After a slight frost during the night, the day was pleasant in Great Salt Lake City.  The 1st division of P.E. Company consisting of 46 wagons arrived in the evening...Met by Band.  Pres. Young met the company at the camp.

Erastus Snow and lady, Sister Ballentine and others met the Company Sep 24th and stayed overnight with them.  Night spent in feasting, dancing, music, prayer and general rejoicing at the end of a perilous journey.  Next day, led by a band on horseback, with their flag born by two young men on horses marched into the city, corralled on Union Square and were addressed by Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball.”

Quite the welcoming committee!

By that time the Perpetual Emigration Fund had been established. The Bushes were beneficiaries (The P.E. mentioned in the first paragraph)...they missed out, however, on the fund being extended to help immigrants from overseas to cross the oceans, which was not incorporated until 1857.

Window Into a Prophet’s Heart

 Love

It is hard t believe it has been three months since I last published on this page...for those who noticed, I beg your indulgence 😏.

For this one, I am branching into some other records to which I had access.  In my last year at BYU, I took a class for which our assignment was to write a paper using only primary documents.  I knew I was related to Julina Lambson (the second wife to Joseph F. Smith and mother to the prophet Jospeh F. Smith Jr.), though at the time, I was a little confused as to how directly.  This gave me access to some of her journals and writings, kept in the archives of the Church History Library in SLC.

I learned there that the Prophet had lost his eldest daughter at a very young age.  Joseph F. Smith had a tender heart, especially as a parent, and it is exposed in parts of letters Julina shared in her writings.  I will share here the snippets I recorded:

From copy of a letter dated June 12, 1870:

Dear Mother and Edna,

I scarcely dare trust myself to write ...even now my heart aches and my mind is all chaos.  If I should murmur, may God forgive me, my sole has been and is tried with poignant grief, my heart is wrenched almost asunder..  I am desolate and my home seems desolate.

The morning before she died, after being up with her all night (for I watched her every night) I said to her, “My little pet did not sleep all night.”  She shook her head and replied “I’ll sleep today, papa.”

And a little later, this:

Lose her? My priceless treasure Jewel!  Whose angel form lighted the darkness of this world...lose my first born, my “Dodo”?  No! No! She is mine, the gift of God, too pure, too lovely to live on earth.  <She> has gone...to <her> glorious home with God.  Lose <her>?  Not while the bright stars of innocence, purity, and love shine for me to guide my erring footsteps back to their bright home.

Oh, I will come, my Dodo, for thou art still the soul of Joy and happiness to me.

Julina summed it up this way:

I have had Eleven Children.  He has loved them all with as great a love as a human could have, but he never got where he could talk of his Dodo without tears in his eyes. 

Coming Home At Last

On October 7th, ‘65 I got my discharge and started for home.  Had to go down to Hannibal, Mo., then across by rail to St. Joe then up the Missouri River by steamboat to Iowa, so I got a chance to see more of the southern aristocracy and the more I saw of them the more I hated them.  They were making desperate efforts to get pay for liberated slaves.  Before I got home the other soldier boys were all discharged and at home working hard to repair the damage of the war and get ready for winter.  So there were none to greet me, only my mother, sisters and a few friends.  Now I must paddle my own canoe.  The little $8 pension was payable in paper currency worth forty cents on the dollar and I must go to work.

My brother-in-law, Cutler, had sold his farm and was ready to start for Missouri, and I decided to go with him.  So we went with wagons and teams down to Clay County, Mo., where we found an old saw mill for sale cheap, and as I was a good saw mill man and knew nothing about soft jobs, we bought the old mill.  Although my legs were badly disabled I had the finest pair of lily white hands  that ever ’crossed the pike’, so I lit into hard work, never counted the blisters, but they were plenty at first.  We run the old mill for all it was worth and were making some money, but our troubles were not all ended yet.

One night after we had finished a hard day’s work in the mill and going home to rest, there came three bandits who shoved their pistols in our faces and took our pocketbooks.  They got about $20 from me and probably twice as much from Cutler, then went to Cutler’s house and ransacked it from end to end, threatening all the family if they did not dig up more money.  I told my sister not to get scared and she held her nerve very well, and there was over $500 secreted in the house which they didn’t find.  There was a tin can sitting on a shelf nearly full of silver coin with a few old screws and nuts on top and they looked in it and left it.  Then they took a few suits of the best clothes in the house and left.

They caught us totally unarmed and unprepared for such an emergency so had it all their own way.  I presume two of them were Jesse and Frank James and I have no idea who the third man was.  After this little experience we got arms for every man and boy of us, but they never tried it again.  If they had there would have been a shooting match.

Soon after this I had another mishap while working at the mill.  My wooden leg suddenly slipped on some ice and forced my knee joint to bend tearing some ligaments loose where they had adhered to the bone.  It hurt worse than when it was first shot.  The blood which had no outlet turned black.  The doctor was called in and by faithful application of poultices for a few days the inflammation was subdued and in two weeks I was able to go back to work, and from this time on the knee would bend further which was a great help and just what was needed.  From this time on I was able to do good work and made a good living for myself and my good mother and she lived a happy and contented life to the good old age of 90 years.  My hair came back to it’s original color and remained so for thirty years.

This is the end of James Farley Lambson’s story, except for a summary paragraph which I posted about this time last year, and a poem of which I posted a few stanzas.  You can read these there, or in the Our Lambson Family pp230-231.  The whole history which I have been posting in segments for the past several weeks can be read at pp225-231.

  

Kentucky, Keokuk, and More Leg Procedures

In the fall we were moved to Louisville, Ky., where we were placed in large wooden buildings.  While there my hair all came out and left me bald, then it grew in very slowly and was gray.  My amputated leg was healed up but the right leg was still very sore and lame.  I tried hard to walk, but could not.

Here the health of the men was far better than it was at Nashville, and there were but few deaths.  Late in the fall the Iowa men were sent to Keokuk, Iowa where we were placed in the medical college.  In January, 1865, Dr. M. K. Taylor in presence of his class of medical students placed me upon the operating table and removed a fragment of bone four inches long which should have been removed long before.  Several smaller pieces had been removed from time to time, but this largest one was left to the last; then the leg got better so I could walk on crutches, but was still very lame.

Then in March’65 gangrene  started in the wound and reached to the bone and about an inch in diameter..  I was laid up for the repair and couldn’t eat while the gangrene burned out with nitric acid.  This was very painful.  I had to lie on my right side to keep the acid in the wound and when I got so tired I could not endure it any longer I turned on my back and the acid run out and burned to skin about two inches around the wound.  After a few days the dead flesh came out and the wound began to heal up once more but it wouldn’t heal up entirely, a small matter showing that there was still some obstruction in it.

In June the men with amputated legs were sent to Chicago to have wooden legs fitted.  In August Dr. Merriman opened my leg to try and remove the obstruction and succeeded in removing about one-half of a large bullet one side of which showed creases of the gun; the other side split off and gone.  This showed that the bullet had split in two  on the bone, one half going on through the other half lodged in the bone.  While the doctor was digging out that bullet I sat in a chair watching the operation.  The pain was nothing compared with what I had to endure many times before.  After this the wound healed slowly.  We got our wooden legs and were sent to Davenport, Iowa.  While at Davenport my health and strength improved and I did considerable work, cooking, washing, cleaning house, etc. But my hair was still gray and the knee would bend but little, so I could not step over anything more than four inches high.

Next Week: Coming Home at Last

Further to the Rear:

Dangers of Recovery in Pre-Disinfectant Times

Of corse it was terribly tiresome to have to lie in one position day and night for two or three weeks.  I had to lie on the flat of my back the first two weeks.  The only change I could make  was to sit up a few minutes as often as I could.  And when my back began to get sore they gave me an old worn-out linen table cloth which the ladies of the Christian Commission had given.  I tore off a piece which placed next to the skin was far pleasanter than the sweaty cotton shirt and sheet, and prevented the bed sore on my back, thus perhaps saving my life.  After two weeks I could turn and lie on my side a short time.  About the middle of June we were loaded into a hospital train and shipped to Nashville, Tennessee.  The stretchers upon which we rode were hung upon rubber bands, a simple yet effective way of giving us a smooth, pleasant ride.  At Nashville, we were placed in a large hospital tent, about twenty cots to a tent.  All bad cases were placed in the same tent together, so we had several deaths, but not as bad as we had in Resaca.  To try to describe these cases would make a long story.  One bright young man with a thigh amputation was a hemorrhagic (bleeder).  The femoral artery had sloughed off and been retied a little further up until the last tie was in his body and it could not be tied any further.  Then when it sloughed off again and commenced to bleed, the nurse placed his thumb upon it and held it while the young man dictated his last letter home to his parents, then the thumb was reluctantly removed and the man went to sleep.

Another whose father had come to see him wanted to live and wouldn’t believe he must die, but while his father was on his knees beside him he passed away.  I don’t know how many died in this tent.  There was some erysipelas, gangrene and some camp diarrhea and contagion which would be sure death if I caught it.  At this critical time, God, or good fortune gave me a good friend who no doubt saved my life.  Old Man Jones was a Tennessee Union man.  The rebels drove him from his home and he volunteered for the Union, being rather old for field service they put him in the hospital to help care for the wounded.  He could neither read nor write but his wife could write a little in the old grammar.  He tried several men to read and answer her letters for him but none of them would do it right.  We had captured bushels of old rebel letters and I had read hundreds of them, not knowing I was learning a valuable lesson.

Then when Old Man Jones called on me to read and answer his letters I did it so well and easy that he jumped at the conclusion that I was the smartest and best man on the job, and was ready and willing to do all he could for me.  I explained to him the dangers of contagion, and he went up town and got me a wash dish and towels, etc., so I didn’t have to use anything that had been used by others, and so I managed to live through the hot summer with men dying every day all around me.  I believe the careful assistance of this good old man saved my life and I have never been able to pay him for his kindness.

Next: Kentucky and More Leg Procedures     

Life of the Wounded in the Rear: The Field Hospital

That night the rebels were retreating and had to cross the creek which they intended to do in the dark, but our men built bonfires on the side of the hills and showered them with shot and shell while they were crossing the bridge.  The roar of those guns seemed to ease the pain and I got a few minutes rest.

Then on the fourth day the rebels were gone and we were hauled four miles over a rough mountain road to a field hospital on the creek.  The tents were pitched with eight cots in each tent but no mattresses.  The rebel cavalry had dashed in behind us and burned a railroad bridge so our train bringing the mattresses had not arrived.

When the old driver saw this, he said: ‘Now I can pay you for helping me care for my horses last winter.’  Then he took the mattress from the ambulance and placed it on my cot so I had a good bed.  There were eight of us, all badly wounded, in that tent.  Just one of the eight was presumed to be worse hurt than I was.  George was placed in the cot beside me and this bad case on the other side.  He soon died.  On the sixth day after I was wounded, May 19th, I sat up and wrote a few lines to mother.  George looked at me and said he ‘couldn’t see how I could do it.’  That evening some of the boys got a copy of the Iowa State Register which gave a list of the killed and wounded in which I was listed as mortally wounded and George was severely wounded.  Poor George had lost so much blood that he could not rally. He wanted to live.  He had everything to live for.  Parents, brothers, sisters, and his fiancé was a good girl, well educated, and I thought George was the best boy I ever saw.  I would have gladly died to save him.  There was nothing for me to live for with both legs gone.  I might be better dead.  These were the thoughts in mind that night as George breathed his last.  As fast as men died others were placed upon the same cot, and of the first eight five died, and in the first twenty-eight days nine men died in this tent.  The doctor examined my right leg but didn’t express any opinion about it until about two weeks after the battle, then he said he believed it would get well; and then the inspector passed through one day looking carefully at everyone.  They spoke pleasantly to me and looked me over carefully, and as they walked on I heard the doctor say, ‘That is the toughest and spunkiest man I ever saw, I thought he was as good as a dead man, but he is going to get well.’  Then I took courage and concluded I wanted to live.

To give some idea of the job of caring for 4,000 wounded men: Most of the wounds were dressed twice daily, the bandages were throw out behind the tents and left all day to attract the flies.  Then a man loaded them with a pitchfork, hauled them up the creek and threw them in the creek.  They floated down to a screen where they were pitched out and washed, a wagon load daily, this got away with the swarm of flies by sending their eggs down the creek.

Next week: Further to the Rear: Dangers of Recovery in Pre-Disinfectant Times